more from The Golden Thread

I just couldn’t fit all the good stuff into one post, so here’s more:

Clothing for mountain climbing

p 189: “Photographs of the Mallory team high up in the Himalayas in 1924 show them bundled up in smocks or tweedy jackets with fiddly buttons bulging over thick woolen scarves, Jaeger trousers, and an eccentric assortment of hats—a rakish trilby here, there an astrakhan cap—that fail to cover fragile ear-tips”.

An Australian named “George Finch had a suit made up to his own design consisting of an “eiderdown lined coat, trousers and gauntlets” covered in balloon fabric. Finch, an Australian, was ridiculed by the snobbish Alpine club and his contemporaries refused to adopt the style, even when it proved far warmer than their own gear”

Re-read that last sentence. Sure, better to lose toes than to look unfashionable…

St Clair also has a good explanation of Almundsen and Scott, their race to the pole and their sartorial choices - who wore Inuit furs, who didn’t and why.

Playtex Spacesuits

In the 1960’s, NASA had bidders vying for the contract to create spacesuits. The winner was Playtex, the makers of women’s underwear. The “ A7-L Omega suit …was much more akin to making girdles than anyone at the space agency would have cared to admit”. She also spells out detailed information on astronaut underwear. “Clothing and clean underwear remain a problem to this day. There simply isn’t enough room on board spacecraft to provide for daily clothes changes: underwear is often worn for three or four days. The fate of the dirty laundry is varied. Astronauts have used underpants as plant pots, for example, but most end up being sent back into the earth’s orbit in a vessel at a trajectory that will cause it to burn up upon re-entry like shooting stars”.

Rayon

Rayon is a fiber made from natural sources of cellulose, such as wood ..Yes, natural, except…

Creating rayon (and other man-made fibers) requires lots of toxic chemicals, which poison the workers and the environment. And synthetic fibers have made clothing so (relatively) cheap that clothes have become disposable.

I’ve finished reading The Golden Thread, and have just started reading The Fabric of Civilization by Virginia Postrel ( hey, reading about ancient fabric production is a nice escape from Covid/political news). This double-dose has made me acutely aware of the enormous change in textile production over the past few centuries.

Did the see the article (https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2020/11/29/president-john-tyler-grandson-harrison/ ) in the Washington Post about Harrison Ruffin Tyler?  He’s 91, and he’s the grandson of John Tyler, the 10th president of the United States — who was born in 1790. Both grandfather and father were remarried late in life to much younger women, but still……. A man born in 1790 has a grandson still alive today. It makes you realize the proximity of the past. A woman in 1790 would still be spinning thread and weaving cloth to create clothing. A single garment could take MONTHS to make. And now we throw away clothing without a care….

One last thing: my presentation for the 108 Contemporary Gallery, Art & Archaeology, was recorded, and my son managed to get it linked to my website. So - should you wish - you can go back to the main menu and click on VIDEOS to watch it. Somehow, when I try it, the video seems to start in the middle, or at the end, but just push the red dot back.

Stay safe, stay sane

Diane